Shelley Long

Shelley was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana to Ivadine, who was a school teacher, and Leland Long, who became a teacher after working in the rubber industry. She was a good orator and actively participated with the speech team in high school. She competed in the Indiana High School Forensic Association and in the National Forensic’s League in 1967 in which she won the National Championship in Original Oratory. She graduated from South Side High School and then joined the Northwestern University but dropped out of it to pursue acting and modelling.

Her first acting projects were the commercials in Chicago. She also joined a troupe focussed on the comedy called The Second City. In 1975, for local TV program by NBC called Sorting It Out, she took the parts of a writer, producer and the co-host. It won three Regional Emmy Awards for the Best Entertainment Show. She again appeared in various commercials for V05 Shampoo, Camay Soap and Homemakers Furniture. The show The Love Boat had her as a guest star for an episode in 1978.

She became much more noticed when she got the role of a psychiatric inmate in a TV movie in 1979 called The Cracker Factory. In the same year, she starred as a guest the show Family and Trapper John M.D. She made her feature film debut in 1980 with the movie called A Small Circle of Friends which as a huge success. She was in Caveman, Night Shift, Losin’ It and had a role in M*A*S*H. Her role in the TV sitcom Cheers ran for a long time and got her a lot of appraisals. She was nominated for her role in Irreconcilable Differences for a Golden Globe Award.

She also starred in comedies like Hello Again, The Money Pit and Outrageous Fortune. She also starred in movies like Don’t Tell Her It’s Me, Frozen Assets, A Message From Holly, etc. After Cheers, she joined the comedy Troop Beverly Hills and in 1990, returned to TV in the short series Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase. The miniseries required her to play around 20 different personalities, and she was given a lot of praise for the effort. Shelley’s first marriage ended in divorce, and she married again in 1981 to Bruce Tyson with whom she had a daughter. The couple got divorced in 2004. She apparently attempted suicide in 2004 due to painkillers overdose.